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Includes an 1878P Morgan Silver Dollar in Uncirculated Condition (MS62) Graded MS62 by the American Alliance Coin Grading Service (AACGS).
*Image shown in uncirculated condition MS63 or better.
- Morgan Silver Dollar
- Morgan Silver Dollars were minted from 1878 through 1904, then again for one year only in 1921. They are struck of .900 Fine Silver.
- Coin Diameter: 38.1mm
- In 1878, under pressure from Western Silver interests, Congress mandated the purchase of silver bullion to make Morgan Silver Dollars.
- President Hayes vetoed the striking of the coin, but Congress passed it over his veto-then presented the first coin struck to the unwilling president.
- The first Morgan Dollar ever struck can be found in the Rutherford B. Hayes Library and Museum in Freemont, Ohio.
- The “Liberty Head” Dollar is more popularly named after its designer, George T. Morgan, chief engraver at the U.S. Mint. He was formerly a student at the Royal Mint in London.
- Morgans were struck at the Philadelphia, New Orleans, Carson City, Denver and San Francisco mints.
- The model for Morgan’s Liberty Head was a Philadelphia school teacher named Anna Willess Williams. She sat for him on several occasions only after he promised to keep her modeling strictly secret. In those days respectable ladies could not be artists’ models. Despite all her precautions, her identity was eventually revealed by a newspaperman. Miss Williams, as she feared, lost her job.
- When Jesse James and his brother Frank robbed a bank, the loot they carried off was most often Morgan Silver Dollars.
- The U.S. financed the Spanish American War by striking Morgan Silver Dollars under the War Revenue Act of 1898.
- In 1904, half of the U.S. Government’s $10 million down payment on the Panama Canal was made in Silver Dollars. (Few found their way back to the States, and silver coins became the backbone of the Panama economy for many years afterward! This helps explain why uncirculated 1903 and 1904 coins are so scarce).
- Silver dollars were very popular in the South after the Civil War because newly freed slaves were illiterate and refused paper money in any form. Also, the memory of the worthless paper money of the confederacy was fresh in the minds of everyone, so the metal dollars rook on a special importance.
- Coinage of Silver Dollars was suspended after 1904 when the bullion supply became exhausted. In 1918 over 270 million were melted down for their precious metal under provisions of the Pittman Act. Less than 17% of all Morgans are said to exist today.
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